Sharing (or Over-Sharing?) at #ILI2012

Sharing and Online Discussions at ILI 2012

On Tuesday and Wednesday I had a stimulating 2 days at ILI 2012, the Internet Librarian International conference. The 14th in the series got off to a great start with the invited plenary talk on “Stop Lending and Start Sharing” by R. David Lankes, Syracuse University School of Information Studies Director, Information Institute of Syracuse. Although David Lankes was not able to be physically present at the event due to ill health, his pre-recorded video, inm which he argued that the future of libraries is not in our collections or a building, but in our relationships with those we serve, provided a stimulating start to the conference.

David argued that librarians should start sharing. But to a great extent that call simply describes what many librarians who attended the ILI 2012 event are already doing. It was possible to see the importance placed on such sharing activities at the event by looking at how the event’s hashtag, #ILI2012, was used to support sharing activities.

Another Twitter archiving and analysis service, Eventifier, provides similar statistics: the service informs us that to date there have been 100 photographs and 10 videos shared in 4,248 links provided by 548 contributors.

In addition to these two services Martin Hawksey’s TAGS (Twitter Archiving Google Spreadsheet) service and the accompanying TAGSExplorer tool also provide fascinating analyses of use of twitter at the event. The TAGS service tells us that there were 4,041 tweets containing 782 links, with @infointuitive and @AlisonMcNab posting the largest number of tweets by a significant margin: with 288 and 269 tweets respectively. The visualisation of the network connections provided by TAGSExplorer, together with the top conversationalists, is shown below.

Does Sharing on Mobile Devices Hinder Real World Discussions?

But did too much sharing take place at the event? Were the ILI 2012 participants spending so much time on their mobile devices that they failed to talk to each other over coffee and at the lunch break? A suggestion along these lines was made during the concluding session at ILI 2012 in which people were asked “What horrified you?”. Funnily enough I had made a similar, although tongue-in-cheek, suggestion when I tweeted the following which contained the accompanying photograph:

I should add that I asked permission to publish the photograph, having explained that I wanted to make a joke about participants at the conference seemingly not being willing to talk to others, according to the evidence of the photograph.

In reality, I would argue that use of Twitter at conferences helps to develop new links and strengthen existing connections. As an example, having noticed, via a tweet, that @MSPhelps (Bianca Kramer) had given “an impromptu presentation on @UniUtrechtLib Twitterbot at#ili2012 workshop” I put her in touch with Gary Green (@ggnewed), who was giving a talk on use of IFTTT:

@MsPhelps Have you met @ggnewed ? Your use of IFTTT seems similar to things Gary has been doing?

and, after the talk was over, we met and I provided further examples of the benefits of ‘white hat SEO’ for raising the visibility of research publications.

On the train home from the conference I saw a tweet from @archelina in which she provided a link to her reflections on the ILI 2012 conference and, in particular, her thoughts on tweeting at conferences. I’ll leave the last significant comment to her:

Speaking of Twitter, there was an interesting comment in the closing plenary today about the fact that so many of us were glued to our mobile devices, even in breaks, rather than interacting with those around us. I agreed with the commenter that sitting in silence round a lunch table all absorbed in our separate online worlds is not exactly healthy, but at the same time I can’t imagine a conference without Twitter. It’s partly the way it extends the reach of the conference itself by letting people follow without attending in person. It’s partly the lively backchannel that it provides in parallel to (and sometimes in opposition to, or spiralling out from) the live conference. But it’s mainly because I’m shy, and Twitter is like a sandbox for social/professional interaction that lets me build relationships (whether based around gin, dresses, The Archers, repositories, cataloguing or all of the above) before actually taking the plunge and introducing myself to someone in real life. In other words, I’m more likely to speak to people at conferences if I’ve ‘met’ them online already, and my professional life is much better now I have this option. (I’d probably never have take the step of actually *presenting* at a conference if it wasn’t for Twitter and my connections and support there.) It works the other way too, with real life events and networking enriching my Twitter life; by the end of today I had a dozen new followers who’d been at the conference. So yes, I’ll still be packing my trusty tablet next time I go to an event. But no ‘tweating’ (tweeting with one hand while having lunch with other), I promise…

These views were echoed by others:

#ili2012 Someone suggest that social interaction in the conference was inhibited by mobile devices. I don’t agree- the networking was great.

although one person suggested that perhaps a compromise could be reached:

Our message to david – we are sharing and building through twitter and online but maybe next year we say no tweeting over dinner? #ili2012

5 Comments

“mainly because I’m shy… my professional life is much better now I have this option [Twitter]”

I agree 100%! My reluctance to talk to people is not caused by use of social media, but it’s how I am. Social media provides me with more interaction than I would have had without it.

But, I do admit that I have not quite mastered the art of listening, tweeting and talking all at the same time. At the recent Library Camp, which is much more interactive than a typical conference, I found it particularly hard to tweet when I was listening and thinking of things to add to the discussion at the same time.

I think Twitter is a great ice breaker and really does help at conferences. I gave a talk at ILI and was very nervous (I know people never think I get nervous, but I do, big time) and I was delighted to see tweets both from people at the talk who I knew and also Twitter friends who couldn’t be there, wishing me well. I also find it useful to introduce me to people and to then look for people I’d like to carry on conversations with in real life. Knowing the individual interests of some of the participants at a conference is a great help in having useful and fun conversations in real life in what is always a limited time.

I also use Twitter to share sessions I attend. I really appreciate people who tweet from conferences I can’t be at or sessions I can’t attend and get a lot of useful information this way. I guess I like to think I am returning the favour when I tweet a session.

Finally, I also use the tweets I make in sessions as notes. Recently I have been capturing these in Storify, where I can add extra links and notes to the tweets, and use them as the basis of future blog posts and to help my own understanding of a topic. An example of that here – http://storify.com/CriticalSteph/project-scarlet-augmented-reality-from-mimas from the Scarlet session I attended at #ili2012 and hope to have time to write up this weekend. It’s useful as a reminder not just of what was said, but also of what I got interested in and what excited me at the time.

Thanks for the comment, Steph. You reminded me that you recently write a post on On not attending a workshop which described how remote participants could support their own professional development by following tweets at an event. It was great to see how you took this idea one step further, by yourself sharing the summary of the event tweets which the local participants had themselves shared with you. A great example of ‘cascade sharing’ which illustrates how librarian and information professional are already embracing the call to ‘start sharing’.

Throughout the 2 days, being able to tweet allowed me to connect with people not only at the event, but also with people who were following it from around the world. Your example of the connection between myself (@ggnewed) & @MSPhelps was a good one. I don’t know if we would have connected otherwise, but I’m glad we did.

I’d also say that if it wasn’t for Twitter and the involvement I’ve had with it in the past at events like this I’m not sure I would have been up there giving my presentation on ifttt – just the increased social interaction I built up over time gave me the confidence boost to get out there and talk in front of a room full of people.

IMHO (to nail my colours to the mast), Chris Dessi’s blog on whether ‘social media is dead’ sums it up for me: http://tinyurl.com/chydonj. There’s no longer a clear distinction between on & off-line worlds, but a constant interplay between the two and all conversation is richer for it.

I’ve never perfected tweating – no one like a sticky phone, but suspect the tension between physical & digital will grow if Google Glasses ever take off…

Tweets from the past - [...] have been recorded for all to see free of charge (Sharing (or Over-Sharing?) at #ILI2012, http://ukwebfocus.wordpress.com/2012/11/02/sharing-or-over-sharing-at-ili2012/). And Twitter, itself,…